Item: Senator Alfonse D'Amato goes on radio to crudely mock Lance Ito, the judge in the O. J. Simpson trial, by using an "Ah-so" kind of Oriental accent to imitate Ito, a third-generation American who has no accent.

Item: Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduces Benazir Bhutto, the female prime minister of Pakistan, as the prime minister of India. Not once, but twice. Pakistan and India are deadly enemies.

Item: Howard Stern, a shock-radio host, uses the occasion of the murder of an exceptionally beautiful and talented twenty-three-year-old woman, Selena Quintanilla Perez, not only to speak of her with ridicule and contempt but to sneer at the grief of
Hispanics about her death and at them in general. "Alvin and the Chipmunks have more soul than Selena"; "Spanish people have the worst taste in music. They have no depth." Stern plays some of Selena's music with
the sound of bullets in the background.

Item: The mother of House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Connie Chung that her son considers Hillary Clinton "a bitch."

Item: Representative Robert Dornan accuses President Clinton of treason for having opposed the war in Vietnam.

Item: Representative Gerald Solomon, new chairman of the House Rules Committee, puts up a portrait of a notorious racist and segregationist in the committee room until black lawmakers complain.

Item: Gingrich, defending himself against the same kind of ethical questions he once raised against former Speaker Jim Wright, says his case is different because Wright is "a crook." Jim Wright was never indicted--much less convicted--for anything.

Item: Gingrich says women "have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections." This was followed by his equally surprising announcement that "men are biologically programmed to hunt giraffes."

Item: In New York, the Senate majority leader says Democrats opposing welfare reform are beholden to blacks and Hispanics, "the people that got their hands out."

Item: In Texas, state senator John Leedom, speaking to a group of Republican homosexuals, several times refers to them as "queers."

We have a problem here, folks.

I was raised in East Texas, I live in south Austin, and I'm not about to pretend that racism, sexism, and homophobia aren't common as dirt in this country. Any time I want to hear someone use ugly words, I don't even have to leave my neighborhood.
But it has not been common to hear this kind of language in public debate in this country for years.

This has nothing to do with political correctness. This is as simple as manners. And as every good soul who ever tried to teach you good manners said, manners are just about kindness. About being a little thoughtful of others. It's just as simple
as the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I once would have said, before multiculturalism and Pat Robertson changed my outlook on life, that kindness is the simple expression of Christianity. Robertson reminds us that the old Christian sin of anti-Semitism still lives.

Now comes the question: Does this tenor in the change of our public debate reflect us? Yes, there is racism, sexism, and homophobia in the land, so are our leaders and talk-show hosts just finally starting to mirror what's out here? Or is this just
a new wrinkle in an old cultural debate that you can see clearly as far back as the works of Mark Twain?

In Twain's books one finds the thesis that women and preachers are in an unholy alliance to prevent normal, fun-loving boys from getting dirty, spitting, fishing, drinking, using dirty words, and otherwise having a fine time. The aim of this unholy
alliance was to force boys to wear stiff collars and sit in church getting their behinds bored off.

Because I always wanted to be one of the people floating down the river on a raft--spitting, fishing, drinking, cussing, and otherwise having a fine time--I have done my fair share of rebelling against gentility and boring preachers. But I never confused
gentility with kindness. Neither did Twain's greatest character, the man called by the now politically incorrect name Nigger Jim. If our shock jocks and right-wing pols want to learn the difference between stifling gentility and real
courage, real kindness, and real nobility, I suggest that they go back and study Jim.